O thinks Latinos are stupid....do you agree?

Obama’s amnesty-by-fiat: Naked lawlessness

“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations [of
immigrants brought here illegally as children] through executive order, that’s
just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has
passed.”

Those
laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last weeksuspended
these very deportations —
granting infinitely renewable “deferred action” with attendant work permits —
thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself
admits he is barred from doing.

Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to
pass the Dream Act, which offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of
thousands of young illegal immigrants. Congress refused.

When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to simply implement the law
by executive action, Obama
explained that it would be
illegal. “Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the
laws on my own. . . . But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how
our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

That was then. Now he’s gone and done it anyway. It’s obvious why. The
election approaches and his margin is slipping. He needs a big Hispanic vote
and this is the perfect pander. After all, who will call him on it? A supine
press? Congressional Democrats? Nothing like an upcoming election to temper
their Bush 43-era zeal for defending Congress’s exclusive Article
Ipower to legislate.

With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no
longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification? Prosecutorial
discretion, says Janet Napolitano.

This is utter nonsense. Prosecutorial discretion is the application on a
case-by-case basis of considerations of extreme and extenuating circumstances.
No one is going to deport, say, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant whose parents
had just died in some ghastly accident and who is the sole support for a
disabled younger sister and ailing granny. That’s what prosecutorial discretion
is for. The Napolitano memo is nothing of the sort. It’s the unilateral creation
of a new category of persons — a class of 800,000 — who, regardless of individual circumstance,
are hereby exempt from current law so long as they meet certain biographic
criteria.

This is not discretion. This is a fundamental rewriting of the law.

Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing
the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS
to stop collecting capital gains taxes and declares that anyone refusing to pay
them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. (Analogy first
suggested by law professor John
Yoo.)

It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment.
Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual
executive-legislative territorial contention. Nor is cap gains, like the
judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent
or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s
bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.

It is shameful that congressional Democrats are applauding such a brazen
end run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the
Hispanic vote and preempts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable
legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked
lawlessness.

As for policy, I sympathize with the obvious humanitarian motives of the
Dream Act. But two important considerations are overlooked in concentrating
exclusively on the Dream Act poster child, the straight-A valedictorian who
rescues kittens from trees.

First, offering potential illegal immigrants the prospect that, if they
can hide just long enough, their children will one day freely enjoy the
bounties of American life creates a huge incentive for yet more illegal
immigration.

Second, the case for compassion and fairness is hardly as clear-cut as
advertised. What about those who languish for years in godforsaken countries
awaiting legal admission to America? Their scrupulousness about the law could
easily cost their children the American future that illegal immigrants will
have secured for theirs.

But whatever our honest and honorable disagreements about the policy,
what holds us together is a shared allegiance to our constitutional order.
That’s the fundamental issue here. As Obama himself argued in rejecting the executive action he has now
undertaken, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am
obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that.”

Except, apparently, when violating that solemn obligation serves his
reelection needs.